Archer Capital, Bilden scoop top honors at 2011 AVCJ Awards

Archer Capital claimed two of the top prizes at the 2011 Asian Private Equity & Venture Capital Awards on Monday night, as the Australian PE firm was named Firm of the Year and Managing Director Peter Wiggs (pictured) won Private Equity Professional of the Year.

Unitas Capital also performed strongly, taking away two awards - Deal of the Year and Trade Sale of the Year, the latter shared with Affinity Equity Partners - while HarbourVest Partners' Philip Bilden won the AVCJ Special Achievement Award for his outstanding contribution to private equity in the region.

Wiggs, paying tribute to the role of fellow managing director Greg Minton, reflected on the hard work that has gone into a successful year for Archer. "We have done four deals and three exits and we are halfway through raising Fund V. It is the culmination of what has been done over 5-7 years by our team back in Sydney," he said.

Archer was also nominated for Trade Sale of the Year for the exit, alongside HarbourVest, of software company MYOB to Bain Capital for $1.3 billion in August, but lost out to Affinity and Unitas. Affinity's Queenie Ho said that the winning transaction - the sale of low voltage engine manufacturer Beijing Leader & Harvest Electric Technologies to Schneider Electric for $700 million in June - represents a significant step forward for private equity in China.

"It shows that buyouts are possible in China and that trade sales can be done," she said. "The private equity model that appears to work everywhere else does work in China as well."

The Deal of the Year award also went to a transaction that was notable for its innovation as well as its size. Unitas purchased Hyva Holdings - a Netherlands-based hydraulics firm with significant interests in China - from 3i Group for an enterprise value of $760 million in May, using Asia's first-ever high-yield bond to finance the deal.

"One of the keys to getting this deal done was the financing - getting an Asian banking syndicate to support what is essentially a European deal," said John Lewis, Unitas CIO, on accepting the award.

Jean Eric Salata, CEO and founder of Baring Private Equity Asia, collected the award for Fundraising of the Year in recognition of the firm closing its $2.4 billion fifth vehicle in just six months. Headland Capital Partners picked up IPO of the Year for Yonghui Superstores while Sandeep Singhal of Nexus Venture Partners was named Venture Capital Professional of the Year.

Bilden's prize was collected on his behalf by Sebastian Van den Berg, who is currently transitioning into Bilden's role as Asia managing director at HarbourVest.

"When Philip started in private equity in Asia 20 years ago it was very different," Van den Berg said. "It was wonderful to see how the industry went from there to become something that is backable by many institutional investors and attracting a lot of capital from global investors."

Read more about the night's winners in the November 29 issue of AVCJ.

 

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• Performance
• AVCJ Awards
• AVCJ Private Equity & Venture Forum